During the first ten minutes of today’s class, write your summary of John Medina’s Brain Rules, “Exercise.” Think about how exercise improves our cognition and brain health. You can also write about what kinds of exercise you enjoy, or what kinds of exercise you would like to check out. Remember to type up your handwritten summary and post it as a comment to this blog post.
ENG1101 D371 English Composition I, SPR2015
Official site for ENG1101 D371
John Medina’s “Brain Rules, Exercise”,made me want to work out even more. Whenever I took an hiatus from working out I noticed I became depressed and angry faster. I really enjoy the examples John Medina gives with his theories. Facts are refreshing. The way John Medina takes me along on a tour of the parts of the brain,then what they can do is amazing. He tells about someone or an experience that collaborates with exactly the rule is genius.
I always felt exercise and just believing you are still young and fit has a major effect on your life, your looks and your health. Mind over matter. But if the brain is a physical thing,then where is the mind and how can it be so powerful?!
According to John Medinaâs exercise chapter, exercising helps have a better mind and body. Medina stated that exercise can even increase our life span. Exercising makes you feel healthy and by feeling healthy, you think smarter and your body tends to stay younger. When exercising, our body burns all the bad nutrients and stores the good one. Our brain needs nutrients from our body, so if our body is healthy, our brain receives healthy nutrients. I like to go swimming on my free time. Not only that I enjoy it, but it keeps me away from the hospital. It is also a stress reliever for me. Thatâs why exercise is the number one prescription doctors prescribe patients with weight problem, heart disease, stress problem etc.
“Brain Exercise” by John Medina enlightened me on how beneficial exercising is. He explains how exercising affects the body’s health condition as you age. In the chapter, Medina mentioned how strong minded Jack LaLanne was when it came to exercising. LaLanne was always mentally alert and exercised daily. Even at old age, LaLanne had a lot of energy and even invented machines such as the leg-extension machine, the cable-fastened pulleys, and the weight selectors. I found it impressive that Jack LaLanne was able to work out and have energy as if he were in his twenties. I even looked him up online and saw how fit he looked in photos, he looked incredibly young. Medina also explains how two people with different lifestyles and mindset affects their body and mind. For example, Medina compared the minds of Jim and Frank from the documentary he watched. He mentioned that Jim and Frank lived in the same period of time but Frank had a brilliant mind and Jim had a withered mind. Jim was a couch potato and Frank had an active lifestyle. Researchers found one factor that contributed to how well people age, which is your lifestyle. If you do nothing with your life, you will not have a healthy body, which will affect your aging. Whereas, if you have an active lifestyle like Frank, you will age well and longer.
The human brain is used to enduring exercise throughout the day. Thousands of years ago, humans were capable of walking 12 miles a day. Moving around and exercising helps improve our thinking skills. It helps get more blood to our brains, bringing it more oxygen and glucose. Exercise also helps keep us fit and healthy, and reduces our risks of heart and body related diseases. On a whim, I walked up the stairs to English class instead of taking the elevator like I usually do. It was only 4 flights, so I was convinced it would be simple enough since I used to have to walk up 6 a few years ago. However, by the 3rd or so flight I became out of breath. I didnât notice any effects it had on my brain, so I shall continue to test this brain rule. Mostly because I want to be able to climb the stairs without feeling like Iâm going to die.
In John Medinaâs, âBrain Rules,â he explains how some type of physical activity helps improves our intellect, which brings us to âBrain Rule #2: Exercise boosts brain power.â Once again, it all goes back to our evolutionary history. When jungles turned to grasslands, we travelled for long periods of time in search for food, which required quite a bit of endurance. Anthropologists states weâve walked a minimum of 12 miles a day back then. This tells us our ancestorsâ never stood idle and the âactiveâ times were the most developmental for the brain. Medina speaks of many research studies that have supported the link between exercise and cognition. Medina also goes into how exercising helps with the biology aspect of the brain. From the moment food enters our intestines, it is turned into glucose, which is our energy supply. Glucose then travels into the blood stream and gets attacked by cellular chemicals creating toxic waste. By exercising, we are helping blood flow into the brain transporting glucose for energy and oxygen to absorb the toxic waste. Medina gave ideas on how we can increase our exercise daily. One of the ideas was to have treadmills and bikes in classrooms and the workforce. Iâve always loved this idea! A treadmill, a bike, a standing desk, or a stability ball- anything other than a chair! Just 20 minutes a day of cardiovascular activity decreases your risk of getting dementia, Alzheimerâs, heart attack, stroke and the list goes on. I, personally, enjoy working out. I do cardio two to three times a week, as well as, some strength training. Working out improves my mood and helps clear my head.
While reading John Medina’s “Brain Rules”, Exercise Chapter, John discusses about a bodybuilder that goes by the name of Jack LaLanne. He lived until the age of 96 and the biggest impression of Jack isnât the strength of his muscles, but itâs the strength of his mind. LaLanne was mentally alert. As in the chapter, John asks, âIs there a relationship between exercise and mental alertness?â The answer to his question is yes, there is a relationship between the two. Exercise can improve our cognition and our brainâs health because as we exercise we keep our bodies in shape to continue our blood to have a continuous flow throughout or body so that we continue to get enough oxygen that we need for our brain. Also exercise is a great way to release stress off of our brain. It clears our mind, treats depression, reduces Alzheimer disease and like Iâve mentioned before improves our cognitive performance. People should at least do a daily exercise to stay healthy because it can really affect your future in the long run. At least 30min. a day will make a difference and prevent you from damaging whatâs really important to the human body, the brain.
Why have doctors continuously told people to exercise with regularity? We hear it all the time. Exercise is good for you, it keeps your body in shape, but that isn’t all it does. Exercise is important for the human body but also for your brain. John Medina gives the example of a bodybuilder who goes by the name of Jack La Lanne who has lived up to his 90s. It isnt the strength of his muscles or the longevity of his life span that impressed Medina but the strength of his mind and the kind of impression he still gave at his age. When you would interview Lanne you couldn’t help but be impressed by his mental alertness and lightning fast humor. So the question that awakes is if exercise has anything to do with your mental state. The answer would be yes it does. The more you exercise the easier it is for oxygen to flow throughout your bloodstream all around your body and into the brain. Exercise is a common treatment for many illnesses such as depression, reduces stress and can even reduce the risk of alzheimer disease. Just simply taking 30 minutes of your day to exercise can do wonders for your body as well as your mind, not only now but for the future.
In John Medina’s “Brain Rules” chapter two, he focuses the importance of exercise. He explains that exercising is a vital key to maintain a healthy body and mind. Because the human body produces bad bacteria, exercise helps to eliminate them by inhaling oxygen, and then exhaling the bacteria as a form of carbon dioxide. Even a thirty minute of exercising daily can vastly improve our cognitive performances. Furthermore, it can also avoid the risk of getting Alzheimer’s diseases, heart diseases, and depressions. John mentioned that a healthy people have a positive attitude to every aspect in life and live much longer than the people who are unhealthy.
I do not always have time to exercise but when I have time, I go to gym occasionally. I would do some cardio and work on my strengths.
John Medina âExerciseâ chapter of âBrain rulesâ, is about how daily exercise can increase our awareness. Itâs been proven that having a sedentary life style can bring you behind in terms of brain functionality and potential. He showed different examples of comparing a 90yr old runner to someone who stays most of the time in the nursing home. He also mentioned that elementary students and above, should get physical education and shouldnât be restricted having it during their school day. My favorite exercise would be jogging at least for 5 miles, pushups, deadlifts, and pull-ups. I believe those are essential to improve your body core and cardio. Practicing to take in more oxygen is key for your muscles to work and grow overtime.
In John Medinas book Brain Rules: Exercise he discusses all the advantages of exercise and reading that chapter made me think I should be working out daily since I stopped for months now. It helps you relieve stress and helps your brain to function well which will eventually lead to you making better decisions. Exercise doesnât only help us to maintain our bodies but it helps our mind a lot as well and when Medina mentioned Jack Lalanne and how he lived up to 96 years of age and it was not because of his physical fitness but because of his mental fitness which he gained through exercise. We learn so much from these books and readings and itâs amazing how much they can help us to become someone better and how to maintain ourselves better. Just by reading this chapter made me want to work out more for my mental fitness, I imagine what the other changes and advantages the other chapters we will read bring for us.
The exercise chapter was very interesting. Who wouldâve thought that exercising wouldnât only benefit youâre physical health but youâre mental health as well. Some I found very interesting was Medinaâs comparison between two men in their 80âs. One was living in an elderly home just waiting to die and the other one was out and about and still had his wits about him. The reason was because one was what Medina called a âcouch potatoâ and the other was physically active. Another interesting comparison Medina made was the process of macadamization which helped people in the 1800âs move goods and supplies easier by making roads that were once hard to cross much easier. Medina said that exercising can cause a better flow of blood to the brain that will benefit youâre mental health. The studies done on children were quite interesting. I can say from personal experience that exercising made me do better in school.
Exercise can help boost the power of a persons brain. People are like sheep in a sense, they do not question what they hear. A person can be told and out right lying still believe it. A man was restrained and thrown into the harbor, being towed through the water. A normal person might not believe it. People analyze what information they receive, decide whether it is true or false and justify their position pertinent to the information that was receipt. People can be fooled quite easily; people are rather gullible unless taught to resist the urge to believe falsified information. It has been proven by science that the mind has evolved from something more primitive. What this primitive mind was is anybody’s guess because this was before the time of effective recording of history. Survival of the fittest is an idea that the fittest will survive. It relies on psychology. People normally interpret this to mean physical strength. In reality, mental strength is just important if not more important than physical strength. Mental strength is not discussed with the same magnitude as physical strength. Man has built great things based on the imagination of his mind, what can be done next?
In the chapter “Exercise” it explains how exercising improves your cognitive thinking but if you push yourself to exercise too much you can messed up your cognitive thinking. Medina shows an example of young school kids exercising daily for a while and the young kids comprehension levels went up. Then, they took out the exercising daily from the school and they tested the kids and notice their comprehension levels went down. So, overall the chapter is saying just a little exercise for a few minutes can help improve and stimulate your brain activity. It also helps you relieve stress and any anxiety you may have.
According to the Brain, exercise is important not only because it just keep you in healthy condition also, it gets blood to your brain, bringing it glucose for energy and oxygen to soak up the toxic electrons that are left over. Also, it stimulates the protein that keeps neurons connecting. And regular exercise cuts the risk of Alzheimerâs by 60 percent. Exercise gives plenty of benefits that to improve our brain skills. I do work out, mostly at the gym. I never thought about the consequence between exercise and brain skills. Most people say that morning exercise make you more tired during the day, however, morning exercise helps me to focus on class all day. Our body especially the brain is a lot stronger than I thought.